[!@#$%!]

which means a big law enforcement apparatus. from the car that drives around looking for unlicensed tv sets to the enforcement of alcohol monopolies, price controls, etc., anything unsanctioned requires a cop. the bigger the government, the more prosecutors you need to prop up every rule.

i don't know if you realize you paradoxical position here.

Originally Posted by Derek

Do you remember Lenin being around? How old are you really symbol man? I have read a lot of Marx and Lenin's works, with Lenin mostly expounding on the framework that Marx built. That part of Russian history is very complicated but Americans seem to have a very particular view of Lenin. "Communism killed 100 million people!" (that figure is easily debatable too) Autocratic communism failed for multiple reasons, but it is nothing in comparison to the death toll that capitalism has inflicted. Of course Stalin was an authoritarian brute and I love fighting with tankies (supporters of Stalin) in left-wing spaces, but the circumstances in which Lenin and Stalin led (and their motives) are different. I know Americans are sort of taught to think of them as one in the same. You can gleam good political insight from Lenin's writings and also learn from his mistakes from when they were put in practice. The post-capitalist communist state I and so many others desire has nothing to do with Russia though beyond theory.

i'm old enough to have seen the end of stalinism. why did the east germans need to corral people? lmao. please, man. when everything belongs to the government, the government belongs to the few and the elite, and the authoritarians are in charge. it is the logical conclusion of these theories. no amount of wordsmithing can change that. we already found out empirically.

i grew up in various latin american countries with various degrees of socialistic policies. they were all a fucking disgrace and only succeeded in distributing poverty and increasing corruption.

for a contemporary scenario just look at venezuela. please.

eta: oh! i also spent almost a year in an israeli kibbutz back in the 90s. no young people wanted to stay so they had to import thai workers. ha ha ha!

Originally Posted by Derek

How are universal healthcare, free college etc. fictions? Nearly every other developed country has them! They are basic necessities that the majority of the Western world has and from a socialist point of view is literally the bare minimum for a fairer society.

the foremost fiction is that they are FREE, of course. there is no such thing as free goods and services. everything must be paid for. we have unlimited desires, but limited resources which have alternative uses. so every economic choice is a tradeoff. the tradeoff is the cost.

if you begin from the fallacy of free good an services, and no scarcity, and no tradeoffs, you're just operating in fantasy space.

just because the costs are hidden from sight or papered over with rhetoric, it doesn't mean that the costs are not there. in fact, governments are almost always offer higher costs and lesser quality goods and services than private enterprise.

i am actually tempted to say “always” but i cannot be sure. vast majority of cases i am right though.

Originally Posted by Derek

How much does the US spend on their overbloated military?

i'm not here to defend militarism. however, beware of power vacuums and greedy neighbors.

Originally Posted by Derek

And you're telling me the guy with cancer who makes $20k a year and needs $100k on gofundme can't get his life saving treatment paid for? What a mess. Macroeconomics means nothing to people suffering needlessly.

see, this is what you need to know what you're talking about before making up "theories".

the guy who makes little money actually receives taxpayer-funded healthcare through the government. obacamare actually forces you into medicaid when you don't make enough. so this imaginary person with his gofundme you're talking about is already receiving berniecare.

i actually know actual real cancer patients who get cancer treatment this way and they don't have gofundmes.

Originally Posted by Derek

What Bernie is proposing is a basic version of the Scandinavian system. I don't think that goes far enough for the damage that's been caused! The question is that can America accept anything further than that right now considering there is a lot of right-wing rhetoric and neoliberal institutionalism that's been free to fester and now needs to be undone?

good luck selling "scandinavian system" to america. i don't think the culture is there, and i don't think that people will like the tradeoffs once they actually experience them.

getting mandatory health insurance is hard enough. government takeover of the health industry-- many will hold their noses and vote for trump.

so we'll see how that goes. show me something solid and some figures instead of rhetoric. but i know that printing infinite money *does not work.* give everyone 'free dollars" and inflation ensues. good luck decreeing price controls to control inflation, lol. we'll all start paying with swiss franc or yen.

Originally Posted by Derek

I honestly don't know. No one does. I voted for Scottish independence at the time but I don't think it's the right time to try again. My gf works for a paper that fully supports independence and there will always be a certain percentage of people who think it's the best way to go, but we'll see what mainstream opinion becomes when Brexit becomes a bit more do or die (no constituency in Scotland voted for Brexit so the Scottish government's argument is that we're being dragged into something we didn't vote for and that independence is always a viable route out of it... it won't be that easy though). I only see the Irish situation getting worse, because on Brexit terms they'll need to betray the Good Friday agreement and peace has always been on condition. I couldn't go to my class last week because there was an IRA bomb threat. That's new for me!

shit. i didn't know the IRA was active again. or was it a prank? damn...